Four years ago, I was about to turn 30.  I was feeling lost and unmoored and decided to ground myself by doing something challenging.  I felt the need to give weight to the final days of my twenties – they felt so fleeting, and I thought I could anchor myself to such a tenuous time by committing my moments to paper; by chronicling my final days of 29. So I wrote a blog.  I called it Finding Something New: Thirty Days til Thirty, and for thirty days, I bothered my five hundred or so Facebook friends every day by announcing each new post.

The entire point of the blog was that I would slow down.  I would look around and pay attention to my existence – to the moments big and small that make up a life.  Ok…so they were mostly small moments.  I wrote about sitting in a front pew at Mass, making pre-fab chocolate chip cookies, and taking yoga classes.  I wrote about my friends, family, students, and my clunker of a car.  I wrote about sunshine and snow days, Shakespeare, and the Stations of the Cross.  Miraculously, people read my blog.  I’m not entirely sure how many – but I had at least two loyal fans.  Perhaps even more miraculous, though, was the effect that writing the blog had on me.  It did exactly as I had intended.  It grounded me and gave me purpose.  It forced me to truly live the tiny moments of my life.

I turned thirty, and I fully intended to keep blogging.  I even set up a new blog that has exactly two posts.  Without the pressure of a daily post to be read by my hordes of adoring fans, I simply stopped committing my stories to paper.

Well, I’m not about to turn anything at all.  I’m not even close to a milestone birthday, or any milestone in fact.  I’m not even feeling particularly lost or unmoored, but I’ve been thinking quite a bit about my life and how I live it – in particular, how I reach out to and open myself up to others.  Four years ago, I, and pretty much all of society, spent a whole lot less time staring at a phone screen.  While they existed, I didn’t have an Instagram, Snapchat, or Twitter.  Perhaps more importantly though, I didn’t have Tinder, Bumble, or Coffee Meets Bagel.  I was not instantly and constantly “connected” to thousands of strangers.  If I wanted to find a date, I had to slog through the seventeen levels of communication on eHarmony (and I did. Repeatedly. No offense eHarmony), or I had to talk to men. In public. Before we had exchanged pleasantries through tiny text bubbles on our iPhones or Androids.

Please understand – I’m not knocking online dating. Many of my good friends have had astonishing success with dating apps, and in the past year, I’ve attended the “Tinder” and “Hinge” weddings of two incredible couples. I’ve also met some really good men through online dating, just not the right man for me.  You see, it’s not the apps I’m unhappy with – it’s what they’ve done to me.

Those who know me very well know that, while I’ve cultivated a bubbly and extroverted personality, I am fundamentally an introvert.  While I enjoy parties and social gatherings, they are draining, and I draw my energy from being alone or with select people whose presence does not require me to be “on.” I am also a generally anxious person in the most literal sense. Years ago, I was diagnosed with generalized anxiety disorder, which means that unchecked, I worry all the time, about everything.  Now, this isn’t about my introversion or my anxiety, but rather about the unfortunate combination of my personality with the modern dating landscape I currently find myself navigating. Take an overly anxious, fundamentally introverted perfectionist and hand her a smart phone filled with flashy dating apps – ostensibly connecting her instantly with thousands of available men.  All she has to do is swipe. And swipe. And swipe.

I’ll let you do the math, but I’ll give you just one short vignette to illustrate where this can all go terribly wrong. One morning, about a month ago, I awoke an hour before my alarm – my brain racing with the lessons I had to teach that day, the workout I didn’t think I would get in, my declining fertility, and the indisputable fact that I would die alone. You know, the usual.  Rather than breathe deeply and try to go back to sleep, I grabbed my phone, opened Bumble, and started swiping.  For the uninitiated, Bumble is a dating app where you can match with men, but they cannot speak to you unless you speak to them first. The catch?  Once you match with a man, you only have twenty-four hours to speak to him before he disappears.  The idea is that this platform would cut down on nasty pickup lines and unsolicited pictures of unmentionables.

That morning, I matched with forty-five men before 5am.  I texted a cheerful “Good morning!” to each of them before I had made my morning coffee.  Four of them responded at some point throughout the day, one turned into a conversation, and I went on zero dates from that particular swiping binge.  You might suggest, and it’s entirely possible, that so few of those men responded to me because they don’t want to talk to a lunatic who speaks to strangers before 5am.  I’m not particularly proud of that story, and it’s definitely not how I pictured a typical morning, or even any morning going for me at the age of thirty-four.  Unfortunately for me, many hours of my life in the past few years have unfolded in a similar fashion.  Some of those hours yielded interesting or even fun first, second, or third dates.  Some of them even led to men I dated for weeks or months.  Most, though, led only to more swiping and a sinking feeling that I would never find someone this way.

I’m not giving up completely on dating apps – that would be closing a door rather than opening a window. I do believe, however, that there has to be another way.  There has to be a way for me to challenge myself to connect with others without staring at my phone. Therefore, I’m committing to cultivating the basic social skills I fear my incessant swiping has allowed to atrophy.  How, you might ask, am I going to go about this new social adventure?  I’m going to be brave, take chances, open myself to others, and I’m going to write about it.

Bear with me while I make a final detour.  I have long been enamored with The Moth Radio Hour.  If you’ve never listened to it, The Moth is a radio show comprised of people telling their stories before a live audience with no notes.  The stories are heart-wrenching, wickedly funny, occasionally unbelievable, and altogether intoxicating.  It’s the storytellers, though, that fascinate me most.  They are real people; human beings pouring their hearts out on stage in front of other human beings.  Sometimes their voices shake or catch, sometimes they flub a word, or pause a beat too long.  Sometimes they tell tales so fantastical I think they must be fiction.  Other times their stories are so simple they are profound, and I find myself sitting on the edge of my seat in a parked car just to hear the punch line.  The other day, I heard the host of a Moth podcast say they have a saying at the show – “either you have a good time or you have a good story.”  It was one of those seemingly ridiculous oversimplifications that hold true under scrutiny – in any endeavor, you either have a good time, a good story, or both.

Through conversations with close friends and some intense personal rumination, I’ve decided to commit myself to having a good time, a good story, or both.  I’ll admit, I’m more than a little bit terrified to chronicle my journey.  Sharing my stories with others makes this commitment real. I hope those of you reading this will read what I write, offer support and encouragement, laugh with me, push me when I stall, pick me up when I fall, and celebrate my tiny triumphs. Yes, I certainly hope this experiment ends in me getting more “IRL” dates, but it’s really about so much more than that.  It’s pushing myself outside of my comfort zone and connecting with people.  It’s about making eye contact, giving compliments, asking questions, and listening to the answers.

Right now, I’m committing to writing three days a week.  One day is not enough, every day is too much, two feels doable, and three will be a challenge.  So three it is.  I’ll send a link to the blog out every so often.  If you are on the edge of your seat waiting for my latest installments, feel free to save the link and check it often.

Because she is incredible and has done quite a bit to inspire me, I want to end by giving a shoutout to Camille Virginia – an amazing dating coach whose advice I will be relying on. As with any life challenge, it will be made easier by having an expert tell me what to do, so I’m going to start by checking items off this list – which Camille shared with me and contributed to, and this list, which I found by doing what I do best. Googling. If any of you have suggestions for other ways I can put myself out there, or want to join me on any such adventure – please let me know.  If at any point to wish to ignore me, do just that.

Peace, Love, and Good Vibes,

Kath